Community Corner

OP/Ed: The Ron Paul Effect in NH's Presidential Election

By their abusive behavior toward Ron Paul ... the GOP gave up 10 - 13 % of the popular vote, which would have resulted in a Romney-Paul ticket crushing Obama in a landslide.

By Greymantle*

The story of how neo-conservatives controlling the Romney Campaign and the Executive Committee of the RNC deliberately sabotaged legitimate campaign victories by Ron Paul and his supporters is not the issue of this article.

That is a matter for historians to detail.

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It is clear, however, that neo-conservatives feared the grass roots – especially Republican Liberty and Ron Paul supporters – which spanned independents, “Blue” Democrats, and the young."

Exit polls after the NH Presidential Primary – in which Ron Paul finished a strong second behind Romney in the Republican race, and a weak second in the Democratic race behind Obama – showed that Ron Paul had a 7:1 lead over Romney amongst independents, and about the same ratio with young voters.

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In addition, Ron Paul because of his anti-intervention, pro civil liberties stance, was strongly attractive to as much as one-third of registered Democrat voters – particularly from the anti-war, civil liberties and human rights wings of the Democratic Party. Clearly, Ron Paul and Republican Liberty was not just a threat to Romney and his neo-conservative supporters – but to the Democratic Party as well.

The manipulation of county, district and state convention delegate elections in the GOP during 2012 was historic. Ron Paul was the winner of one popular vote (Virgin Islands) and had the majority of elected National Convention delegates in as many as 12-14 States.

However, apparent (and blatant) “rules changes” and “decertifications” – such as the decertification of 10 out of 20 legally elected Ron Paul delegates in Maine, following apparent fraud in taking a 200-vote Ron Paul popular vote victory and turning it into a 200 vote victory for Romney – were upsetting – not to just Ron Paul supporters but increasingly, to the entire Republican Grass Roots. The Republican Governor of Maine - a Romney supporter, even protested this action to the RNC Executive Committee - and ignored, boycotted the Convention in Tampa, symbolically refusing to cast his ballot for Romney by his absence.

As we approached RNC Tampa, top Republicans like Michael Steele and Jack Welch correctly identified the unprecedented opportunity offered by Ron Paul – the ability to draw historic numbers of young, independent and even Democrat voters to Ron Paul.

They strongly advised the GOP to “give Ron Paul anything he wants” to keep Ron Paul and his supporters in the GOP to support the eventual nominee – who was clearly Romney.

However, the Romney campaign and the RNC Executive Committee failed to heed the warning. They continuously manipulated rules, increasing the number of States needed to nominate the Presidential nominee and Vice Presidential nominee from the Convention floor, to avoid a floor fight. Simultaneously, they de-certified Ron Paul delegates from multiple State delegations, often with the complicity of neo-conservatives in the State, District and County GOP committees.

At the Convention, despite an attempt by Texas to nominate Ron Paul from the floor, Texas was ignored, and the nominations refused. This blatant suppression of the Republican grass roots not only alarmed and angered Ron Paul supporters – it was a clear threat to the grass roots recognized by many Republican leaders.

On September 29, 2012, the New Hampshire Republican Party passed the Resolution #1 – the only resolution passed that day - by overwhelming voice vote (more than 90 percent of delegates):

RESOLUTION TO RESTORE THE POWER OF THE GOP GRASSROOTS

Whereas, the new part rules at the Republican National Convention in Tampa were adopted under questionable circumstances with disregard for convention rules;

Whereas, the new rules impose a top-down structure

of governance in place of the party's traditional bottom-up structure and reduce the power and autonomy of state and local party organizations;

Whereas, the changes to Rule 12 give unprecedented power to the national committee to change party rules without the input and approval of state parties and their members;

Whereas, it is to benefit of the New Hampshire Republican Party that First in the Nation rules not be open to change between conventions;

Therefore, be it resolved that:

We condemn Rule 12 as antithetical to Republican values and assert the primacy of the delegates to the Republican Convention in setting party rules;

We reject the new top-down structure of governance as detrimental to the long-term success of the Republican Party.

As I stood to vote in support of this Resolution, I noticed the vast majority of my fellow NH Republicans did so as well – grass roots Republicans from the Paul, Santorum, Gingrich, Cain, Pawlenty, Bachman and Romney campaigns – rose in support of the Resolution which strongly chastised the National GOP for its blatant manipulations, suppression of the Republican grass roots, and demanded repeal of Rule 12.

Until that day, Romney did not have the full support of the GOP grass roots. Following that day, I believe a large number of Republican Liberty supporters, and other grass roots supporters from other campaigns, began to “come over” to support Romney.

However, it was clear that the vast majority of “Blue Democrats” would not vote for Romney. Nor would the majority of Libertarian independents.

By the abusive treatment of Ron Paul and his supporters, at least in NH, the GOP neo-conservative leadership sacrificed the votes of the majority of independents and the Blue Democrats – an important contingent that might have given Romney a victory in NH. Instead, these voters either did not vote, wrote in Ron Paul, or voted for Gary Johnson in protest.

In an attempt to sway these Ron Paul supporters, Rand Paul came to New Hampshire on Oct 20, 2012. In addition to a large and well-attended rally at University of New Hampshire at 2 p.m. Rand met with a small number (about 18) Liberty leaders – most of whom had been grass roots leaders in Ron Paul 2012 campaign – at Murphy’s Taproom in Manchester.

You may remember pundits like Doug Wead warned us, before RNC Tampa, that disturbing things would happen in the Ron Paul campaign – and that we should trust the leadership to do strategic things which many of us might not understand at first – but to trust it WAS strategic. This was one of those strategic things. Rand told us we have to look to 2014, 2016 and beyond. Rand believes leaving Obama in office was NOT going to help the Liberty movement. He wanted us to search deep down, and maybe for the first time in our lives as voters, do what we believe was the BEST way to take Obama out of the White House. He suggested we should leave fighting neo-cons for later. Neo-cons are diminishing anyway – more new Republicans are liberty oriented, while the neo-cons "age out" of the system (to put it gently).

Rand felt while Time is on our side. Obama is not. He urged Liberty supporters to vote for Romney this time around, and leave it to the growing numbers of Liberty supporters in Washington to help mould the Romney administration. In particular, if re-elected Obama may nominate as many as two new Supreme Court justices. Rand predicted there would be 8-10 Liberty oriented Senators after the election, instead of the six they had before the election (there are eight). Rand suggested that a Romney white house gave the Liberty Senate block much more chance to help pick a Liberty friendly Supreme Court.

About half of the people in that room were Republican Liberty, and most of them soon came out in support of Romney (including myself). I could see Rand had influenced some of the non-Republicans – but I’m not sure they were able to sway enough voters to come out and vote – or to vote for Romney.

In New Hampshire, and nationally, I believe the Romney campaign left a historic opportunity on the table. Shortly before RNC Tampa, a Rasmussen poll showed that in a 3-way race between Romney, Obama and Paul, Paul would take 13 percent of the popular vote. Most of this 13 percent would NEVER vote for Romney. By their abusive behavior toward Ron Paul (which was totally unnecessary in my opinion) – the GOP gave up 10 - 13 percent of the popular vote, which would have resulted in a Romney-Paul ticket crushing Obama in a landslide, and dismembered the Democratic Party for possibly a decade to come. Like a microcosm of the National race, I believe that's what we saw in NH.

Editor's Note: Greymantle is a New Hampshire Republican who, for professional and political reasons, has requested anonymity. Nashua Patch editor Carol Robidoux has verified the author's identity.


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